Under Lock and Key; or, Marion Marlowe's Last Role

# Under Lock and Key: Marion Marlowe's Last Role

This weekly serial for young women, authored by Grace Shirley, opens with attorney Richard Carson eavesdropping in a restaurant and overhearing his client Reginald Brookes professing his intention to marry Marion Marlowe despite a provision in his late father's will requiring him to forfeit a hundred thousand dollars if he does so. Desperate because his position as executor depends on preventing this marriage, Carson enlists Steve Blakely, a professional criminal, to orchestrate Marion's commitment to an asylum under a false identity. Blakely successfully forges admission documents naming her "Cornelia Gordon," recruiting a complicit nurse, Miss Kearney, to facilitate the scheme. As the plot unfolds, arrangements are made to transport Marion to the sanitarium where she will be imprisoned while her family remains unaware of her true whereabouts.